Dream job

Having recently given in my notice I'm on the hunt once again for another job. As luck would have it it seems that I may have found my dream job (pun intended). Apparently NASA are looking for people who are willing to stay in bed for them. In fact they are offering $17000 for you to stay in bed for 90 days! As demanding as that sounds I think I could manage that. I wonder what the qualifications for such a position would be. If "lazy bastard" and "not a morning person" are in the requirements section then I think the job is practically mine.... now where is that application form?

The end of an era

Today I handed in my notice. It was a sombre affair. The angels cried as I broke the news(well not really but it sounds good). Having stuck at the job for so long I was getting kinda institutionalised so its probably a good thing that I've decided to move on. I originally only planned to stay in the job for a year but then they offered me more money and I ended up staying a year and a half more than I originally intended.

As I gave the bad (or good news, depending on how you look at it), my boss turned around and said to me: "I thought something was up when I saw you in so early". Have things gotten so bad with my time keeping in work lately that I can't even come in early anymore without someone suspecting that I'm up to something?

So, from next month onwards I'm going to be an unemployed bum. I can't say that I'm going to miss the work but I know I'm going to miss the money ;) The big bad world with the big bad lions and vultures await me once again. The inevitable job hunting and the interview processes are going to be a huge pain in the ass. However, I'm not too pushed about getting another job until at least August so that should give me plenty of time to motivate and psyche myself into getting another job (and hopefully one that I'll actually like).

Thus beginneth the new grand adventures of the hat...

I h8 fckng txt spk!!!

As I was browsing the cinema listings in entertainment.ie to see what was out this week a review in the "your reviews" section caught my eye. It wasn't the fact that the review was profound or anything, it was more the fact that I thought entertainment.ie's page was faulty and was spewing out random symbols. Then I realised it was someone reviewing "Step Up 2" writing entirely in text speak. Given the movie in question being reviewed I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised.

In any case, I decided to click on the "more" link to see if I could decipher what the said individual had to say about the movie since I wasn't in the mood to do work and wanted a bit of a puzzle to solve to pass 5 minutes of my time. To my horror I find that the public reviews page is just a mass of text speaking reviews of said film.

It would seem that "kids" (I'm presuming that it's kids here even though I know I'm wrong on this occasion) these days are incapable of writing properly anymore. I wonder is this how they write when asked to write an essay in school/college? If so, does the teacher/lecturer just dismiss this little "phenomenon" or does he or she give them a deservedly big fat zero mark for not knowing how to write properly, never mind coherently. When these "kids" submit their CV for jobs I wonder is the majority of their CV written in text speak as well. Do they have things like "Nme : D8co d" and "Adrz: 4 me gaff"?

If this is a sign of how society is going I despair for society. These are the people who will one day (if not already) be running our country and services and more than likely have children (if not already) themselves. I'm not looking forward to the day when someone finally gets a book written all in text speak published because its now the accepted way to write.

The early bird gets...errr... stuff fast

I've been stuck in Cali time ever since I got back from my little trip to California a couple of weeks back. For some reason my body clock just dosn't want to adjust back to Irish time. So as a result of this I've had a good few nights/days where I've stayed awake for 24 hours in a vain attempt to get my body clock back in synch with Irish time. Also, anytime I've fallen asleep I've fallen asleep super early due to being really tired and then waking up super early again. At this stage I've just come to accept it as the norm.

I finally got my full driver's license on Tuesday. Yay me! I actually got it surprisingly fast. I went down to the motor tax office on Monday afternoon and threw in my application form and had the license in my post box the following morning/afternoon. Now if only everything was always that efficient.

I just subsequently found out that there is a little flaw in my grand plan of being able to rent a car during the weekends once I got my full license. It seems that you are unable to rent a car with any car hire company in Ireland if you had not held your full license for at least 1 year. This in my opinion is stupid. What is stopping me from sitting on my arse for a year then going back to a car hire company to then hire a car. By that time I would be rusty behind the wheels, being more likely to crash the car all because I haven't had the chance to practice my driving due to the fact that I was unable to rent a car and too poor to buy a car. In my opinion they should just introduce higher rates for those that have not held their license for more than a specific time rather than down banning them.

This week I also got myself a brand spanking new laptop. I figured it was time to upgrade my current laptop. The old laptop is about 4 years old now but still has a lot of mileage on it but I figured 4 years is a good turn around time for most things. The new laptop, like my driver's license arrived super quickly. I got it in just under 3 days. I ordered it late on Sunday evening/early monday morning during one of my sleepless nights and i got it delivered to me first thing on Wednesday morning.

Now if only my police certificate would get here sometime soon. Six almost seven weeks on from the time I first asked the gardai for it and I still haven't seen head nor tail of it. The gardai told me that I'd have it by the end of this week. It's now Friday and i haven't checked my mailbox at home yet but I'm willing to bet a large sum of money that the mailbox will be empty (except maybe for bills) when I get back later on this evening. Stupid gardai.

D&D Co Creator Fails Saving Throw

Yesterday while sitting watching TV I oddly felt a chill run down my spine. As it turned out this was the result of the collective mourning cries of millions of gaming nerds worldwide as they learnt of the passing away of Gary Gygax, one of the co creators of the grand daddy of all role playing games, Dungeons & Dragons! Alas, it would seem that the health potions have run out and no Clerics of high enough level were to be found to cast a powerful enough resurrection spell to help Mr Gygax :(

While I wouldn't classify myself as a nerd in the traditional sense (though others may disagree with me on that point) I do admit to playing (and enjoying) a little bit of D&D back in my younger, "wilder" days. Yes, I even admit to owning a few sets of 20, 10, 8 and 4 sided dice at one stage as well.

As such I felt that Gary Gygax deserves an honourable mention on this blog. Putting aside the spotty misunderstood nerd stigmatism associated with role playing games (or any other type of games of this nature), the man did help to come up with a fairly complex but yet easy to follow rule system, concept and set of universes. The game itself was simultaneously easy to get into and inevitably quite fun if you gave it half a chance. This not only gave many a... erhem, "socially challenged" child (or adult) another outlet to express themselves it also spawned a multi millon dollar industry in fantasy literature, computer games, movies and other such merchandise. For that you've got to give him some kudos.

Here's a little tribute from the blog of celebrity Star Trek TNG character and nerd, Will Wheaton, about Mr Gygax.

Hobbling Hat

Last Friday I was down at the hospital for a routine checkup when the nice doctor lady noticed a blood clot looking thing on my leg. Told her that I'd had it for a while and wasn't too concerned about it. In either case she got a few of her colleagues in to have a quick look at it just to be on the safe side. One of them (who happened to be one of the top dermatologists in the country) had a look at it and confirmed that it was an arterial bunching and wasn't too overly concerned about it. However he then pointed down to a smaller similar looking mark further down my leg and said that he'd be more inclined to remove that one as it looked more abnormal. As luck would have it he had a spot free later that afternoon and said that he'd remove it for me if I popped in to see him at 2 to save me having to make an appointment and waiting 2 months or so.

I figured why not. No harm having the bunching removed just in case there might be complications down the line. I figured it was small enough, I'd just pop in and he'd do his magic and that was that. Little did I know that it involve minor surgery which took up to about 40 to 50 minutes. The waiting room was full when I went in and when I hobbled out again (with my head spinning from all the local anesthetic I had gotten the doctor lady who was hacking me up to inject into me) it was completely empty. I ended up having a thumb size chunk of meat cut out of my lower leg and then given 16 stitches to help cover up the nice big gash that was left over from the hacking and slashing.

So as a result of that, I'm now hobbling around very slowly in a bit of pain desperately trying not to tear my stitches. It now takes me about 45 minutes to walk to work in the mornings (usually only takes me 20 minutes max) with grannies speeding pass me on the path with the look of frustration that I usually give when I'm stuck behind a really slow walking person for ages. On top of this humiliation, I've even been beeped by a few cars as I've hobbled across the road at the pedestrian lights, as if to tell me to "hurry the fuck up, I'm really important and want a clear way so that I'll be able to drive away before the lights actually hit green". Like beeping me will magically make my leg feel better so that I can run across the road quicker for them. Fecking stupid Dublin drivers!

I'd take the week off to properly recover but I'm off to California in about a week and a bit so would just feel guilty in taking time off so soon before my trip. On the plus side, at least my leg isn't bleeding as much as it did on the first day I decided to try to walk to work so it must be getting better.

I had grand plans of skiing and attending a big swing weekend event in Sacramento while I was in California but now it looks like I'll just have to confine myself to tour buses and other things that don't involve a lot of walking or any sort of physical activity :(

And to top all of this off, the bathroom of the people living upstairs from me has begun to leak, leaving lovely water marks on parts of my ceiling and wall. (Mental note; must call landlord soon to sort this out). I told yous the last time that Sod the bastard was just warming up. Lets just hope this is the worse of it. Bring on the good times.

Stupid Sod's Law

The last few days have been a good few days for yours truly. Everything just seemed to be going my way. So much so in fact I was preparing for the inevitable heap of pure bad crap that usually always follows a run of good fortune. It's just Sod's Law. It's his job to kick you in the nads when your on a high and least expecting it. As expected and right on schedule, Sod came alone and did his job.

So, where to begin? Well, lets start with the good stuff first. Last Saturday evening I went along to a charity event held by a swing dancing friend in aid of Habitat for Humanity. It was an Oscar themed swing dancing event. Before you went into the event you were asked to fill out a sheet predicting best actor, best actress etc. A big prize was then given to the person at the end of the night who managed to give the same predictions as that of the local resident "film expert" in Filmbase Ireland. It just so happened that I was that lucky person... yay me! I won myself a lovely big hamper of goodies and a weekend for 2 away in Galway. I knew all those misspent late nights watching crap movies would one day pay off. Up to that point in time I have never ever won anything in a raffle or anything of that nature before.

Roll on Monday morning. I had a driving test scheduled for that afternoon and had borrowed a friend's car over the weekend for the test seeing that I didn't possess any wheels of my own. The test was in Rathgar which was not the original test centre I had applied for (still with a 6 month wait I wasn't about to complain). I had previously checked the pass rate at the Rathgar test centre and it stood at 44.5%, the lowest pass rate in all the test centres in Dublin. So needless to say I was not looking forward to the test and was preparing myself for failure. On top of that, I managed to stall the car every single time I went out in it over the weekend which was not doing anything for my confidence. In any case, roll on Monday afternoon and the test... Low and behold I passed!!! First time and all. Didn't stall the car once! Of course on the way back home I stalled it again :)

So at this stage the Sod's Law alarm bells were starting to go off in my head. Too much good stuff was happening to me without any bad stuff. Now the bad stuff.

About a month ago, on a whim I applied for a position with a particular animation studio in the States (lets just say the name of the studio starts with a P and ends with an R). Not thinking anything of it, 3 weeks ago I get an email from their HR department asking for a quick phone interview. So since I was to fly out on my ski trip at the time I scheduled it for the Tuesday that I was back. Of course, I didn't tell anyone about this interview cause I didn't want to Jinx it. The interview itself when I finally had it was a short 20 minutes or so chat with one of the software engineers in the place. They basically wanted to talk to me to see if it was worth flying me out to California for a proper full interview. The guy at the end of the phone seemed nice enough and he didnt' really ask me anything that I couldn't answer. He basically described the position and what the job entailed and asked if I had done x,y and z before to which I answered yes to, promptly followed by long winded examples of using x,y and z in current and previous work (it's what I tend to do when I'm nervous, I babble). In fact the position from what was described to me was exactly what I always wanted to do and just seemed so perfect for me. In anycase, at the end of the "little chat" I was told that I'd be contacted shortly about their decision. All in all, despite my ramblings I thought the "interview" went quite well.

So a week later on Monday evening, the day that I passed my driving test and when Sod's Law alarm bells started going off in my head I received a PFO letter from the HR department :(. It wasn't entirely unexpected. I did get my hopes up there for a while after the initial interview but overall I guess it was just nice to know that my background and qualifications were good enough to warrant being noticed among probably the dozens of other applications I'm sure the studio gets everyday. I'm just going to put it down to that they decided at the end of the day it would be less hassle for them to interview and hire someone local. Besides, they are surrounded by some of the top ivy league universities in the states (i.e. Stanford and Berkley) so it would make more sense to interview and hire graduates from there and save the inevitable headache and cost of potentially hiring someone from abroad. Still, I'm glad I got the initial interview if nothing else. At least it shows that I'm more qualified than I've given myself credit for in the past.

So, now I'm expecting Sod to continue his "good" work and I'm bracing myself for a lot more crap that he's going to throw my way in the next few weeks. To Sod, all I'm going to say is : "Bring it on!".